Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to audiovisual processing and, more particularly, to mitigating drift in audiovisual assets.
Description of the Related Art
Streaming digitally encoded audiovisual (AV) programs, such as feature length films and television programs, over the Internet has become increasingly popular as the availability of high-bandwidth Internet connections has expanded. Streaming media services typically include a content server, a content player, and a communications network connecting the content server to the content player. The content server is configured to store media files (or “streams”) made available to end-users. Each media file may provide a digital version of a movie, a television program, a sporting event, a staged or live event captured by recorded video, etc.
Oftentimes, audiovisual material is edited as part of a post-production process in order to convert such material into one or more media files for distribution to end-users. Those media files are usually distributed as part of a streaming media service or through more conventional physical media channels. Audiovisual material is edited for a variety of reasons, including, for example, to convey the author's creative intent, to delete certain scenes in order to conform to ratings, or to include credits that are not a part of the feature presentation. Metadata relating to such edits is typically provided with the audiovisual material in order to facilitate conversion of the audiovisual material into media file(s) that can then be distributed to end-users.
One drawback of the above approach is that a given processing edit specified by an author can introduce temporal drift between the audio and video tracks making up the audiovisual material when the edit enters or exits a constituent track at a non-sample boundary. When accumulated over the duration of the resulting media file, multiple edits to the audiovisual material can produce a perceptible lag or lead between the audio track and the video track, which degrades quality and can result in a poor user experience.
As the foregoing illustrates, improved techniques for editing audiovisual material would be useful.